The curious fact is that biology tells us nothing about desire. And, when you think about it, culture -- novels, movies, opera, and quite a lot of painting -- is about desire, how we manage desire, how we suffer from it, and how it brings us joy when we get things right. A story without desire -- and that means without the insistence of desire -- will be empty, dry, and more or less aimless. That is one reason we read novels, to see how people fall into awkward moral situations and then try to extricate themselves. This is why there is so much anguish in the world: frustrated desire is every bit as miserable as poverty, because desire is no respecter of one__ position in life: everyone goes through it.
PW
Author
Peter Watson
/peter-watson-quotes-and-sayings
3
Quotes
2
Works
Author Summary
About Peter Watson on QuoteMust
Peter Watson currently has 3 indexed quotes and 2 linked works on QuoteMust. This page is the canonical destination for that author archive.
Works
Books and titles linked to this author
A Terrible Beauty: The People and Ideas That Shaped the Modern Mind: A History
The Age of Atheists: How We Have Sought to Live Since the Death of God
Quotes
All quote cards for Peter Watson
One of the many innovations of modernism was the new demands it placed on the audience. Music, painting, literature, even architecture, would never again be quite so 'easy' as they had been.
Live with the consequences of your deeds and enjoy the warmth they create. The only warmth in the cold, indifferent universe is that which we create ourselves. And that is what a work of art is, it is what a constructed life is, a fulfilled life, the warmth of acts.